Ka Popoy: Working Class Hero

Filemon Lagman (March 17, 1953—February 6, 2001), popularly known as Ka Popoy was a revolutionary socialist and workers' leader in the Philippines. He split with the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1991, and became the president of the socialist workers group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP). He was the first prominent victim of a political assassination under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Why are many 'veterans' of the fight against the Marcos dictatorship now are pitted against each other in the battle between President Rodrigo Duterte and his opponents?

A friend sent a YouTube link to the American pop singer Don McLean’s now iconic song American Pie, and reminded me that the line “and they were singing dirges in the dark the day the music died,” could very well refer to what has happened to the communists of the 1970s and 1980s. This prompted quick check at the bookshelf to pick out a number of memoirs that Filipino communists from the so-called “First Quarter Storm” generation and their successor, the “martial law babies” have written in the last decade.

One of the enduring myths of these memoirs is that even today, when they have all started to drift towards middle age, these cadres and their national democratic understudies have remained brothers and sisters. A couple of writings did acknowledge that this unity had frayed since 1986, and their authors have timidly mentioned the splits of the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

But this is unfortunate for if one wants some historical context as to why many of these “veterans” of the Storm and the dark years of the dictatorship are now pitted against each in the battle between President Rodrigo Duterte and his opponents, one needs to go as far back as the splits of the 1980s, especially after the CPP leadership under Jose Ma. Sison, resolved the ideological debates through a sanctioned killing of those the CPP’s eternal chairman tagged openly as spies and renegades

The stories of these assassinations still have to be written.

We still await the brave ex-cadre who will write about the tragic fortunes of Filemon “Popoy” Lagman, twice the leader of the CPP’s Manila-Rizal regional committee, disciplined and sent to the countryside after 1975, when he and the rest of the committee defied the edict from the Politburo to break up the Party’s electoral alliance with the anti-Marcos traditional politicians and the hated social democrats formed to challenge the dictatorship’s Kilusang Bagong Lipunan Manila slate led by Imelda Marcos and composed of 20 other forgettable characters (the one I only remember was Foreign Secretary Carlos Romulo whose campaign speeches sounded like academic lectures, boring a lot of hakot listeners to sleep).

Lagman did his time in the countryside, sacrificed a lot (his wife was believed killed in a military encounter), and regained his post in the last years of the dictatorship. After Marcos was ousted, however, the Manila-Rizal regional organization broke away from the Party after the 5-man Politburo’s disastrous decision to boycott the 1986 elections (Yes Virginia, only 5 people decided the nearly 1-million communist movement’s fate at a time when the politics of the period was clearly leaning towards the Left. Talk about radical democracy!). It was cadres of the regional organization that formed the initial core group of what is now the party-list group Sanlakas and its labor federation the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino. In its early years, and under the leadership of Lagman, it was one of the strongest and fiery non-CPP left groups.

Lagman was assassinated on February 6, 2001 at the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines. According to Ben Reid his was “the first political assassination to occur under the new regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and signals the possible beginning of a campaign of terror targeting the country’s leftist movement.” Reid writes that an unnamed “rightist faction of the military loyal to the ousted president Joseph Estrada was behind the killing,” its aim being to destabilize the still wobbly regime of Gloria Arroyo. This was the official line that Lagman’s Sanlakas would adopt.

Others however suspect that Lagman’s assassination was the first of several rubouts of the top ex-cadres of the Party who disagreed with the Filipino Ayatollah’s return to Maoist fundamentals. Lagman was known as the CPP’s Lenin, because he advocated for a communist movement with a strong influential “proletarian” (i.e., industrial worker base), shared Karl Marx’s disdainful description of the peasantry as a “sack of potatoes” (pace the insistence of Mao and his Filipino acolyte Sison that peasants were the mass base of the revolution), and saw very little value in a long-drawn protracted guerilla warfare against the Philippine government. For Lagman, communists could only come to power though urban uprisings and massive general strikes, and where the New People’s Army was to just play a supportive role.

This urban-centered strategy demanded the broadest unity of the diverse groups and classes that live in the metropolis, to give the revolution the heft to challenge and destroy police and military power, and ultimately the government. To achieve this “united front” the Party needed to make compromises to its anti-Marcos ideological rivals. Hence the Manila-Rizal took seriously the electoral collaboration it made with Benigno Aquino and the elite opposition in 1975 to the chagrin of their Party bosses.

This argument was also used as justification for Lagman questioning the validity and relevance of Mao Tse Tung Thought as the CPP’s ideological foundation after the big 1986 brouhaha. For which he was allegedly extra-judicially killed.

That death and Sison’s indirect threats before that, plus the expulsion or forced resignation of other anti-Sison cadres and the break away by regional organizations like the Manila-Rizal presaged an unceasing contention among these radicals. Its current and perhaps most poisonous edition is the fight between pro- and anti-Duterte radicals and ex-radicals. – Rappler.com

In this file photo, masked sympathizers guard the coffin bearing the remains of slain labor leader Filemon 'Popoy' Lagman, draped with the hammer and sickle flag as the funeral march heads to Marikina, February 12, 2001. Jay Directo/AFP

Petitioners assail the decision of the Court of
Appeals affirming the decision of the Regional Trial Court which disposed
thusly:

WHEREFORE, premises considered and pursuant
to the mandate granted by the Honorable Supreme Court in its Resolution dated
November 18, 1996, it is the decision of this court based on evidence, the law
and jurisprudence:

1. To issue a writ of certiorari annulling
and setting aside the criminal Information filed in Criminal Case No. 96-1369
MK and the warrant of arrest issued by the respondent court pursuant to said
criminal information;

2. To issue a writ of injunction enjoining
the respondent court from further proceeding with Criminal Case No. 96-1369 MK;

3. To declare the detention of petitioner
Filemon Lagman illegal; to direct the immediate release from detention of petitioner
Filemon Lagman in connection with Criminal Case No. 96-1369 MK unless the
petitioner is being held pursuant to some other lawful cause or authority;

All the respondents shall be collectively
responsible in enforcing the immediate release from detention of petitioner
Filemon Lagman

In compliance with the directive of the
Honorable Supreme Court, furnish a copy of this decision immediately to the
Honorable Supreme Court.

The instant controversy sprung from a letter
complaint which was referred by the Presidential Task Force on Intelligence and
Counter Intelligence (PTFIC) to the Department of Justice (DOJ), for
appropriate action, involving a case for violation of Article 248 (murder) of
the Revised Penal Code against Filemon Lagman alias Ka Popoy and seven others,
in connection with the ambush slaying of a traffic policemen in Marikina on
March 30, 1992.

Attached to the subject letter-complaint are the
sworn statements (karagdagang sinumpaang salaysay) of Jose Alvarez dated April
9, 1996 and Rodrigo Porsona also of the same date; the sworn statement of
Arthur Oquendo dated March 13, 1992 and his supplemental sworn statement dated
June 27, 1996; the Affidavit of PO1 Bonifacio Simbulan PN dated June 27, 1996;
the medico-legal report (No. M-052992) dated April 3, 1992; and, the
investigation report of SPO1 Ronito L. Villareal dated March 30, 1992,

The DOJ then assigned a three-man investigating
panel which in turn issued a subpoena to Filemon Lagman, informing him that a
complaint has been filed against him by the PTFIC; commanding him to appear at
the DOJ on July 22, 1996 at 2 p.m. for preliminary investigation; and ordering
him to submit his counter-affidavit and other supporting documents in his
defense, with a warning that failure on his part to submit his
counter-affidavit shall be considered as waiver to present his defense in the
preliminary investigation resulting in the case being considered submitted for
resolution.

On July 22, 1996 setting for preliminary
investigation, only counsel of private respondent Filemon Lagman appeared and
requested that the defense be given ten days within which to submit its
counter-affidavit. That same day, the preliminary investigation was reset to
August 2, 1996.

On August 2, 1996, Filemon Lagman, through his
lawyer, submitted a verified Motion to Dismiss, explicitly stating that such
motion is not intended to be in lieu of his counter-affidavit, and should also
not be considered as a waiver of all other legal remedies available to him. The
motion to dismiss assailed the jurisdiction of the investigating panel to take
cognizance of the referral letter-complaint of the PTFIC dated June 28, 1996.
Likewise, it was argued that the letter-complaint of General Libarnes of the
PTFIC was not sworn to before an officer authorized to administer oaths as
required by Section 3(a), Rule 112 of the Rules of Court. The absence of the
verification, it was claimed is fatal, such requirement being mandatory and
jurisdictional.

The state prosecutors, did not resolve the motion
to dismiss. On the other hand, Filemon Lagman, while waiting for action on his
motion to dismiss, did not submit his counter-affidavit. On November 6, 1996,
the state prosecutors promulgated their resolution recommending the filing of a
criminal information against Filemon Lagman, et al. Said resolution did not
bear the signature of 2nd Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Apolinario D.
Bruselas, Jr. Nevertheless, it was approved by Assistant Chief State Prosecutor
Nilo C. Mariano who signed for the Chief State Prosecutor.

The Information was raffled to Branch 272 of the
regional Trial Court of Marikina. On November 8, 1996, a warrant of arrest was
issued for Criminal Case No. 96-1369 MK against Filemon Lagman.

Pursuant to said warrant of arrest, Filemon Lagman
was arrested and detained by the combined teams of the PTFIC and agents of the
National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on November 12, 1996. On November 14,
1996, Filemon Lagman, et al., filed with this Court a petition for Habeas
Corpus and Certiorari with a prayer for a restraining order and/or preliminary
injunction. Acting on said petition, the Court issued a resolution on November
18, 1996, stating:

Acting on the petition for Habeas Corpus
dated November 14, 1996, the Court resolved:

a) to ISSUE the Writ of Habeas Corpus;

b) to RETURN the writ to the Executive
Judge of the RTC not later than November 20, 1996;

c) to ORDER the executive Judge of the
RTC-Quezon City to conduct an immediate raffle to SET the case for HEARING not
later than Thursday November 21, 1996 at 8:30; try and decide the same on the
merits and therefore FURNISH this Court with a copy of the decision thereon;

d) the respondents to make a RETURN of the
writ on or before the close of office hours on Wednesday, November 20, 1996 and
APPEAR PERSONALLY and produce THE PERSON OF Filemon Lagman on the aforesaid
date and time of hearing;

The executive judge of the RTC of Quezon City
accordingly raffled off the case on November 20, 1996 to Branch 221 of the same
court which proceeded to hear the case on the merits and thereafter rendered
the decision, the dispositive portion of which we earlier quoted.

Recourse to the Court of Appeals proved to be
unavailing. Thus, the instant petition.

Initially, the Court notes that the petition was
filed 2 days beyond the 30-day extension granted by us which fell on March 13,
2000, even as petitioners asked for an extension of only 15 days. On this score
alone, the petition may be outrightly denied.

Petitioners insist that the ruling of the Court of
Appeals that a murder complaint for purposes of preliminary investigation with
the prosecutor must be verified or sworn to is contrary to law and
jurisprudence. Likewise, petitioners claim that the Court of Appeals erred in
holding that the preliminary investigation on the case against respondent was
flawed on the ground that the investigating panel did not act on private
respondent's motion to dismiss but instead promulgated the resolution
recommending the filing of a criminal information; and in finding that the
constitutional and fundamental right of respondent Filemon Lagman to due
process was violated in the preliminary investigation of the complaint against
him.

In regard to the first assigned error, the Court
agrees with the Court of Appeals that it can not give credence to the
petitioners' contention that the letter-complaint filed by the PTFIC need not
be verified or sworn to before a person authorized to administer oaths.

Section 3 of Rule 110 of the Rules of Court clearly
supports the stand of the Court of Appeals:

Sec. 3. Complaint defined. - Complaint is a
sworn written statement charging a person with an offense, subscribed by the
offended party, any peace officer or other public officer charged with the
enforcement of the law violated.

Anent the second issue, the Court notes that when
private respondent Filemon Lagman filed the motion to dismiss, a manifestation
was made where he expressly reserved his right to file a counter-affidavit in
the event that his motion to dismiss is denied. But, despite such
manifestation, petitioners did not act on the motion to dismiss. Instead, they
promulgated the November 6, 1996 resolution recommending the filing of a criminal
information against Filemon Lagman, et al., violating private respondents'
right to a preliminary investigation.

A preliminary investigation is required for
offenses cognizable by the regional trial court under the procedure provided in
Rule 112 of the Rules of Court. This procedure is to be observed in order to
assure that a person is accorded due process.

It is a basis tenet that when the law provides for
preliminary investigation and such right is claimed by the accused, a denial
thereof is a denial of due process.

Consequently, the warrant of arrest which was
issued pursuant to a flawed information is likewise fatally flawed. True it is,
Section 6, Rule 112 of the Rules of Court provides that upon the filing of an
information, the RTC may issue a warrant for the arrest of the accused.
However, in the case at bar, where the information is defective for lack of a
valid complaint and preliminary investigation, no warrant of arrest may validly
spring therefrom. Further, any arrest made pursuant to such invalid warrant is,
perforce, unlawful; any detention, illegal. It bears stressing that a flawed
proceeding cannot ripen into a valid warrant of arrest nor detention.

The Court has ruled that it is axiomatic that where
a deprivation of a constitutional right is established, the Court that rendered
the judgment is deemed ousted of jurisdiction and habeas corpus is the remedy
to assail the legality of the detention (Gumabon vs. Director of Bureau of
Prisons, 37 SCRA 420).